Every day or every week we hear in the news or read in a newsfeed there’s somebody who was found out. This person had a secret. They had something going on in the background of their life and now everybody knows it. It’s been discovered that they’ve been living a double life. They have been living a lie. They have been lying to their friends, to their family, to their colleagues, and to the people in their community. They have been lying to the people that depend on them.
And now they’ve been found out, discovered, uncovered, busted, because they were harboring and living with a secret. “How could they do such a thing? How could they live with themselves?” one might even ask.
In this starting episode of our new series, we will be talking about how to guard your inner self and heart. We’ll explore how to protect your true being and soul so that you can live with yourself. We’ll delve into the reasons why people keep up the charade, why they keep deceiving people and themselves, and question how they can live with that. We dive deep into the concept of secrets and living a double life. Then, we’ll have an honest discussion on the impact these secrets and deception can have on one’s personal life. We’ll discuss the importance of being true to oneself, and finally start the road to healing our inner being. Join us as we examine the question “How can you live with yourself?”
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How Can You Live With Yourself?
I’m so excited. You know that it is always an honor to have you join us. I’m grateful for each one of you who takes the time to read our blog. Believe me when I say I love you for it. Last time, we have been talking about the truth about you, facing your truth. It’s been phenomenal. We have brought on some exceptional guests who came in and shared their nuggets. I like to call them juicy nuggets on facing your truth.
You all know that here at the show, we empower people to uncover their greatness, find their true identity and own who they were created to be. By revealing and understanding your greatness, I’m convinced no one can tell me differently and you will fall madly in love with you. I say this time and time again. I also say this, “The easiest person to deceive is the person in the mirror.”
When it comes to deceiving myself, I’m the best at it. When it comes to deceiving yourself, you are the best at it. Tell yourself the truth. When you become ruthlessly honest with yourself, you will come out of hiding and become the person that God created you to be. You will be you unapologetically. No ifs, ands and buts about it.
How about we jump into the next topic of our next series? I have something for you. Here we go. Every single day, we watch and hear the news or read a news feed about somebody who was found out. This person had or has a secret. They had or have something going on in the background of their lives and now, everybody knows it.
It’s been discovered that they have been living a double life. They have been living a lie. They’ve been lying to the people that depend on them, their families, friends, colleagues, coworkers and to the people in their community. Needless to say, they’ve been lying to themselves as well. Now, they have been found out, discovered, uncover and busted. They were or are harboring a secret and living with a secret.
My first thoughts and maybe your first thoughts will probably be, “How could they do such a thing?” Let’s say when we’re in judgment. You probably say, “How could they live with themselves?” This is how we respond. How could they carry such a thing on for such a long time? How can they keep up the charade?
Can you see them showing up for dinner, acting as if nothing happened or showing up and acting normal? They’re looking at their spouse in their eyes and their children in their faces as if everything is okay. How could they betray their friends, family and community knowing that one day, it may all become public knowledge? Once it does, it’s going to destroy everything, their family and friendship. It can undermine their career and life.
How can they do such a thing? How do they live with themselves in doing this? The reason is it is so difficult for us to imagine, “How could they? Why would they?” We put ourselves in their situation and think, “I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t do what they did and go on or live with myself. I couldn’t do that.” We tell ourselves, “My integrity won’t allow me to do such a thing and live with myself.”
Here’s the truth. You could. I could. We could live with ourselves. You could live with yourself. I can live with myself. Take a moment and think about it. If my current inner self is neglected and left unattended and my current inner being does not see a better future for myself, I can live with myself. My current self will live with myself despite the unhealthy version I have become.
Let me get to the point. My external self, the side that people see, when it is so far away from what I truly am on the inside, it’s easy for me to think, “It can’t happen to me. I can’t get busted. Nobody will know.” It’s easy for you to think that it can’t happen to you. We think this all the time. People think it can’t happen but believe it or not, that is why it happened because we think it can’t happen.
How To Guard Your Inner Self And Heart
In our new series, we are talking about how you guard your inner self and heart, your true being and soul so that you can live with yourself. This series is all about you living with yourself. How can you live with yourself? Allow me to share this scripture reference. I’m a Jesus follower so I need something to use as my anchor as I share what I’m sharing.
Proverbs Chapter 4, the 23rd verse says, “We should guard our heart with all diligence because out of it flows the issue of life.” This scripture implies whatever we allow entering into our hearts. I’ve learned that this is my physical heart, my mind and my thought because that’s where things enter into our life. Think about it. Some of us may think of our souls. This scripture implies that whatever we allow to enter into our hearts and intervention, if not examined and evaluated properly, will undoubtedly be expressed in our lives and actions in positive and/or negative ways.
James Allen wrote this book called As a Man Thinketh. The title is influenced by a verse in Proverbs Chapter 23, Verse 7, which says, “As a man, think it’s in his heart so is he.” Our heart doesn’t do a lot of thinking, I want you to know so that’s why I use this when I say it in our inner being. I read this book and it’s a good book. It’s a short and easy read.
Let me share a quote from this book. It says, “The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. Men are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves. Circumstance does not make the man. It reveals him to himself.”
The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, and his power for good. Click To TweetIn this new series, we are interchanging. When we talk about the heart, we’re talking about our inner self, inner being and souls. This is what I’m talking about when you hear heart. To some of us, it’s the mind because things enter into that. Life is not always kind. You don’t have to live very long to know that life is hard on our souls. When I say soul, I’m talking about the inner part of us, our interior life, your inner being, my inner being.
The inside part of you are fears, worries, folks, dreams, wishes, experiences, disappointments and failures all while putting on a happy faith. You know that part I’m talking about. Whom do people get when they get you? That’s a question. Think about it. Whom do people get when you show up, go to work, school, supermarket and for a walk? Whom do people get when you’re hanging out with your friends, interacting with your loved ones and spending time with your spouse and children?
How do you show up? Are you one way with one group at work, school or a group of people? Are you another person when you’re with another group of people like your family? Is your person on the inside completely different from the person on the outside? Here’s the thing. Whether it’s our parents, performance or reputation, we attend to those outward things so much faster than we do our inner things.
Whether it's our parents, performance or reputation, we attend to those outward things so much faster than we do our inner things. Click To TweetHere’s why. We know people are watching us. Eyes are on us. People are expecting. There are expectations of us. Some people are competing for approval. We are competing for acceptance, attention and promotion. It’s natural to pay attention to our exterior of us. We all have a public life that is on display every single day but there’s only one person who can be attentive to your soul, your heart and what’s going on in your inner being.
There’s only one person who can be attentive to what’s going on inside of you and that one person is you. It’s you. It’s me. My question is this, how can you live with yourself? What habits do you have that will ensure that the self you’re living with is the self that is on display every day? What habits values, convictions and beliefs do you have that will ensure what people see on the outside is what they’re getting when you show up?
Everything Left Unattended Will Become Unhealthy
Here’s a fact. Even if our inner being is healthy but it’s left unattended, it will become super unhealthy. Nothing gets better when left unattended. The health of your inner being determines your capacity and ability to live with the version of yourself that you don’t like. It’s the health of my inner being, a version of yourself you never desire to be. The health of your inner being determines how wide that gap is between who you are and whom you pretend to be.
The health of your inner being determines how far that gap can continue to expand before you finally crack, confess, break down or be found out. It’s the health of your inner being, your heart, soul, mind and integrity, like who you are. Your inner being has very little tolerance for the lack of integrity, the true you. The healthy heart realizes that what’s going on on the inside is not reflected on the outside. The healthy heart and soul recognize it and say, “I need to do some work.”
It’s what’s reflected on the outside that is showing up better than what’s reflected on the inside. The healthy inner self says, “I got to get to work. I got to do some work. I need some help.” The healthy inner self gets to work because the healthy inner self is one. Their integrity on the inside, your integrity on the inside and my integrity on the inside and the outside are in sync.
The health of your inner being, your inner self, determines how far things can go before your conscious won’t let you pretend anymore. It’s the healthiness of your inner being. The health of your soul determines how willing you are to lie to people and yourself. Remember, we’re the easiest person to deceive.
When you are no longer the self you used to be, the self you want to be, the self you always thought you would be, the true you that people can see, you are truly neglecting the health of your inner self and inner being and it will ultimately come back to haunt you. It will hurt you. More specifically, it will hurt the people who are around you, the people who are most important to you.
Don’t fool yourself. I’m not going to fool myself. We all have the potential to become someone whom we survive. If our inner beings are left unattended, we could become unimaginable. You could do the unthinkable. I can do the unthinkable and live with myself. People do it all the time. It happens all the time because we think, “It could never happen to me. I could never get caught.”
Don’t get it twisted. The difference between those who avoid becoming unimaginable and doing the unthinkable is the health of the inner being, soul and who they are. How healthy is that? They have the willingness and the ability to pay attention to what’s going on inside of them. That’s the difference. This is what we’re talking about and this is our new topic.
How Can I Live With Myself?
Before asking you the question, I have to first ask the question myself. How can I live with myself? I want to share my answer and what I do to help me to live with myself. To live with myself is to be content with who I am. I need to love all of this and everything about me. I have to ensure my life brings joy and peace. I’ll say it to myself first before I can share it with those who are around me and who I am around.
I want to share some things that I do that help me to live peacefully and joyfully with myself. I’m talking about me living with me and some of the things I do. The first thing I do is surrender. You have to look the word up and understand what it means. I learned what the word meant to me. I learned how to surrender myself and my life to the will of God. I learned what that looks like for me.
I’m a bonafide Jesus follower so that part is huge for me. I studied what surrendering looks like for me, giving my whole life up to the will of God and what he will have for me. What does that look like for me? When I lived an unsurrendered life, I said yes to selfishness and self-centeredness all the time because it was all about me. Selfishness and self-centeredness became my master. I made life all about me. My selfishness and self-centeredness directed me. It guided and ordered me to say yes to everything that benefits me and do things that benefited me and only me.
I said yes to every opportunity, every moment and everything that benefits me. Let’s do it. I’m down. I had no problems living in the land of selfishness and self-centeredness. I was good and comfortable but that was an unsurrendered life for me. I lived there long enough that selfishness and self-centeredness ultimately liberated me from the real me. I was showing up fake and phony.
I didn’t know myself. It liberated me from my real inside, who I am on the inside. I didn’t know who I was. I woke up one day and realized that I’m two different people. I show people who I am. When I come home, I’m different. Even in my inner self, when I’m around people, they don’t see it. I don’t let that part out. I guard that. You’re not going to get to know that part. I’m going to be fake and phony but now, I don’t know how to be fake and phony. That part is gone. I don’t know what that is anymore.
I was what I wanted people to see, to be honest. Not who I was on the inside. It was fake. I don’t know how to do that anymore because I got rid of it. My question is, “Are you really what people see?” I became what people were getting. My selfishness and self-centeredness are what they were getting. It was all about me. When I began to look inward, I did not like what I saw at all so I had to begin to do some self-work on myself and uncover my gifts and talents. I had to do the work.
The Path To Greatness
The path to greatness exercise that I talk about all the time is what I started with. In doing work on myself, I had to uncover my gifts and talents. All of my self-centeredness, selfishness, gifts, talents and abilities got covered up. The authentic me, the true me, I couldn’t see and neither could anyone else. I learned that when I lived in selfishness and self-centeredness, I was living an unsurrendered life and it didn’t work for me.
I found myself undermining everything in my life when I lived an unsurrendered life. Everything I touch, I undermine. I undermine my relationships, career, success and future. I learned how to surrender because that wasn’t working for me. I learned how to give my body, ears, eyes, feet, hands, thoughts, and everything over to God daily. When I did that one day at a time, life became easier for me.
I studied and learned how much God loves me, how much he cares for me and how much he is for me. I didn’t have anyone tell me this or preach or teach this to me. I studied this for myself. Here’s the sweet part. No one can take it from me now that I know it. I start believing in God for me, not for anyone else, my husband or my family. What I know is that he knows everything about me and what’s best for me.
I started doing the work on myself so I decided that I will start believing. I start studying and learning about who is this God that I say I serve and not worry about the harm he will do. I studied how much he loves me. I even looked into how he sees me, not when he looks at me but what he sees. That blew my mind and that’s what happened.
I began to study what trusting him looked like for me when I say I trust him. I begin implementing these things in my life daily. It didn’t happen overnight but it happened one day at a time. I’m in a relationship with the God that I serve, who is my higher being and who cares and loves me. He loves me like no other. No one can ever come close to the love that he has for me. He’s willing to guide me and direct my life.
Surrender was the first. I had to surrender my selfishness and self-centeredness so that I can begin to share and love others. I surrendered because God was not going to force himself on me. He’s not going to force his will. It was a choice that I made. Here’s another thing that I did. I had to learn how to guard my heart, my inner being and my soul. I had to learn how to protect that.
Watch Over Your Soul And Heart
Remember that Proverb says, “Watch over it. Watch over your soul and heart because from it flows all the issues of life.” You got a lot of issues going on. You got a lot of stuff going on, a lot of drama in your life. Check out your heart, your inner being and what you’re thinking. Pay attention to what’s going on inside of you. I had to pay attention to what was going on inside of me. I had to see what was going on inside of me.
What are your thoughts? What are you thinking? What are you thinking about? What are my thoughts? What am I thinking about? How am I feeling when I see or hear something? Does that trigger me? How do I react or respond to people? Am I celebrating somebody’s failure or misfortune? What’s going on inside of me? Am I jealous of someone? Do I see someone that has something that I want?
Do I feel guilty about something? Am I walking around in guilt? Do I hate someone or other people? Am I greedy when I see somebody who has something nice that I want? The only reason is that they have it. Pay attention to what’s going on inside. That’s what I did. I paid attention to my thoughts, how I’m feeling and what was coming up in me.
You all know that I teach you how to manage your emotions for a reason. It’s important to be able to manage that emotion that comes up. Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you angry? Are you frustrated? What happens? Are you reacting when these emotions come up or are you responding? Here’s what I know. What’s on the inside of me? What’s on the inside of you? What’s on the inside of us? It doesn’t stay there.
It leaks whether it’s good or bad. I want all the good stuff to leak. I don’t want the bad stuff to leak but it does. Believe it or not, it leaks. We leak. You leak. I leak. We leak our bitterness, anger and jealousy. When we leak, most of the time, we don’t even know we’re leaking. No doubt about it. Other people see it, especially the ones who love us the most.
We leak our bitterness, anger and jealousy. When we leak, most of the time, we don't even know we're leaking. But other people see it, especially the ones who love us the most. Click To TweetWe think we’re doing a great job at covering it up but we’re not. Nevertheless, people see it and those people will walk away saying, “What’s up with him? What’s up with her?” They see our leaking. Therefore, I have to guard my heart, inner being and soul. I protect that. When I say my heart and soul, I mean my inner being, my interior life. You know that part of you that no one sees but that part of you that you go to bed with every night.
You know that part of you that you face every single day in the mirror. If you want the self you live with to be the self you present to folks around you, you got to do and get this right. Monitor your heart. Guard and protect your soul and inner being. Pay attention to it. When you monitor, pay attention and guard your heart and soul, you can’t allow anyone to speak into you.
I don’t allow anyone to speak into me because I’m very protective. I must guard my inner being because from it flows the issues of life. I’m living and loving life so I surrender my will daily. I protect and guard my heart and soul. While doing so, I have to open my hands and leave them open. This is what I’m saying to you as well.
Keep Your Hands Open
Every morning, I will declare that I am grateful for everything that is placed here in my hand. I declare that I can receive only what has been given to me from heaven, everything that comes my way. Everything that I receive is not my doing. I don’t have to do anything. I just keep my hands open. It’s not my doing to receive it so I will not cling or hold onto it. I will not wrap my hands around it, cling to it and holds onto it. Instead, I’m going to keep them open.
Clinging to things that I cannot keep makes me small. It devalues who I am so I want to keep my hands open. I will not cling to what I cannot keep because it makes me self-centered and selfish. I’m holding onto it, selfish and self-centered. I will not cling to what I can’t keep because it will rock my soul. It will cause me not to pay attention to my inner being. Before you know it, jealousy and greed are going to pop up.
Clinging to things that you can’t keep makes you small. It devalues who you are. It will cause you to not pay attention to your inner being. It will rock your soul. Click To TweetJealousy and greed don’t get it twisted. It will rot your soul and inner being. Instead, I will make what is in my hands. I’m keeping them open and available to others. When I keep them open, what is in my hand becomes available to others, which is so powerful. When I do this with what’s in my hands, it has the potential to multiply, grow and change others.
Closing my hands shrinks my capacity to be happy. It shrinks my ability for joy, peace or contentment in who I am and who God made me to be. When I close my hand, that’s what it does. I intentionally make it a part of my lifestyle. I live with my hands open because I’m reminded of the value of life. The value of life is always measured in terms of how much of it you give away. Not by how much of it is preserved or kept.
Open your hands and leave them open. The value of your life is always measured in terms of how much of your life is given away. Click To TweetI’m determined to keep my hands open because I want to give. This is a life of contentment, joy and happiness for me. It’s my definition of happiness. This is the life that causes people to lean in with me and wonder. They’re saying, “You’re amazing.” I agree with that. When people ask me, “How are you doing,” I said, “I’m amazing.” It catches some of them off guard.
I am because I’m learning to keep my hands open and check what’s going on inside of me. People see what’s on the inside of me. It leaks and comes out and they want some of it. It’s not only me. If you do the same thing, they’re going to want some of it from you as well. I’m starting the series to ensure that the self I’m living with is the self that’s on display.
This series is about ensuring that what people see on the outside is what they’re getting. What do people get when you show up? This is what this series is all about. The question is how can you live with yourself? Quickly surrender your will every morning, not my will but thy will be done. Every day, monitor and guard your heart, soul and inner being, especially from greed, anger, guilt, jealousy and any condemnation.
Guard yourself against that because they’re not your friends and they will rot your soul. Amen. They are not going to add anything to your life. Instead, they’re going to take from you. The third thing is to open your hands and leave them open because the value of your life is always measured in terms of how much of your life is given away. This is how I live with myself and face my truth every single day. Let me ask you again. How can you live with yourself? You can, and I know you can. We all can. Join me here on the next episode as me and my guest dive into this conversation and topic. How can you live with yourself? Ciao for now. Bye-bye.